Josephine Lenahan

Ninth grade English teacher;
 Tenth grade homeroom teacher.

The only high school teacher who cared. Always  encouraging, supportive, patient and helpful. She was delighted by her students personalities and their  individual growth. Truly a natural born teacher who loved her job, her students and her life. She visited my house!

Joan
Lippincott

Professor;
Head of the Organ Department at Westminster Choir College, Princeton.

Her Mozart stunned me. She was an important performance inspiration and a patient teacher. She  continued to pioneer correct and invigorated Bach performances for five decades.
Her recordings are treasures.

Robert Abramson

Professor of Eurhythmics, Westminster Choir College, Princeton.

Turned me on to complex rhythms and subsequently forever eliminated problems in playing or conducting multiple rhythms. After one year of study, simultaneous multiple rhythms were as natural and comfortable to me as breathing. My roommate and I used to pace around the room in opposing rhythms while carrying on a conversation in a third rhythm. We took great joy in finding ways to punctuate each other's even-tempered march with triple meter word phrases.

William Whitehead

Professor,
Westminster Choir College, Princeton.

A far more patient teacher than I deserved. He took me back to the beginning and forged a new technique; then turned me on to performing 20th century and avant garde music. It became my life.

George
Lynn

Music Director, Conductor, Professor -
Westminster Choir College, Princeton.

A vastly underrated composer and conductor.  His settings of Hammerjkolds “Markings” are deeply affecting.  After absorbing his concept of tonal production, I was able to create uniquely powerful sonorities with the ensembles I conducted. The lessons I learned from him have lasted throughout my life. He also possessed a masterful philosophical wit. Upon first meeting him, I proudly announced that he and I were from the same hometown. He smiled wryly and said: "Wilkes-Barre is a nice place to be from." then paused to see if I got it. The emphasis on "from" helped.  Example of his wry wit:  referring to the full score of the Mahler Eighth Symphony, "Symphony of a Thousand," Lynn commented (as the cost-conscious publisher he was), "there are so many notes on the page, the publishers would have saved money if they had used white ink on black paper!" Most influential statement: "The world has too many specialized idiots - be a renaissance man!"

Robert Page

Head of Choral Activities, Temple University, Philadelphia; Associate Conductor of The Cleveland Orchestra; Chorusmaster, The Cleveland Orchestra Chorus; Music Director and Conductor of the Mendelssohn Club of Philadelphia; Music Director and Conductor of the Mendelssohn Choir of Pittsburgh; Founder, Conductor Robert Page Singers.

A true and dedicated teacher and very underrated conductor.  Just as Whitehead did with the keyboard, Page started me back at the beginning and allowed me to redevelop my conducting technique.  Every moment with him was a challenge;  He never let me rest. The true testament to his teaching technique is that I continued to grow after I left his tutelage - every year of my musical career. I would never have become the musician I was without his influence.  Forget Robert Shaw - Robert Page was always far superior. His Grammy nominations and awards are well-deserved. He is the consummate musician, teacher, performer and conductor.

Leonard Bernstein

Music Director and Conductor of the New York Philharmonic.

For every reason imaginable. I still remember the 3-year joy of performing under his direction as a member of Westminster Symphonic Choir. And I can still hear his voice introducing the "Rhythm" episode of his Young Peoples Concerts as it opened with an excerpt form Stravinsky's Rite of Spring. "Whats' going on here?," he said. And he described  a movement from a Brahms symphony as being "like a three-legged waltz." A super-human. His Mahler interpretations have yet to be exceeded; His Haydn was underrated, and no one performed 20th Century music as perfectly and musically as he did. Whenever we spoke, he was kind to me.

 Darth Gates

Founder, Microslop

Because of him, I am reminded to thank God in Heaven I was never in a position to destroy creativity and ruin the lives of so many people and companies worldwide. He has inflicted the consequences of his troubled teen life on the entire world.  Revenge of the Nerd indeed! Homogenization is good for milk, but disastrous for the progress of humanity.